Marvel's random miniseries generator has been in a funny mood lately, as a glance at the solicitations will confirm.  (Drax the Destroyer?  Doc Samson?  Dominic Fortune?)  And in that spirit of "hey, it might work", here comes X-Men & Power Pack.

This is a sequel to the Power Pack miniseries from last year, which sold abysmally in the direct market.  Either it did very well in digest format, or it's one of those occasional books that Marvel arbitrarily decides to support in the face of reader indifference, because the same creators are back, with the same basic approach.  Incidentally, this is presumably out of continuity, since Lightspeed is a kiddie here, and she's much older in Runaways, but who knows any more?

Curiously, this doesn't seem to be a single four-issue story.  Instead, this is a self-contained "Power Pack meet Wolverine" issue.  The solicitations seem to suggest that Power Pack will be meeting other X-Men in upcoming issues, thus justifying the title.  Be in no doubt, though, that this is Power Pack's comic, with the X-Men as guest stars.  An odd concept in its own right.

I've always had a soft spot for Power Pack, a fantastically ludicrous idea that works far better than you might expect.  On paper, the concept of pre-teen superheroes sounds dreadful - and the occasionally mooted Power Pack movie proposal still fills me with dread because it would mean child actors.  But in fact, in the context of an established superhero universe where superpowers are already part of the ground rules, you can get away with the weirdness of a pre-teen superhero group, and play it as a magnified version of squabbling siblings.  The original series got great mileage out of that angle.

Marc Sumerak and his artists GuriHiru are trying to recapture that, and they're not doing too bad a job.  The animation-style art is undeniably charming, with a cartoon feel that's a good match for the material.  It's strong on emotion and acting, which is essential if a group-dynamic story like this is going to work.

The story is, well, rudimentary.  The Power family go to a hallowe'en costume party, and Jack and Katie squabble because, well, that's what they do.  Jack wanders off and stumbles upon an arbitrary fight between Wolverine and Sabretooth, and Power Pack help out the good guy.  That reconciles Jack and Katie, and Jack gets to deliver a little homily about "sometimes the best teammates are the ones you least suspect."  Sumerak has the right idea for an arc with those two characters, but doesn't manage to make it mesh with the Wolverine/Sabretooth stuff, which seems to have been nailed on for no reason other than that Marvel demanded guest appearances from the X-Men.

But... yeah, it's alright.  The story largely steers clear of saccharine, and the kids are just plain cute.  The plot needs beefing up, but otherwise, it's rather pleasant.

Rating: B

back | continue